Going Down Swinging Part 5

Time check: Eleven O Two. And a half. Christ. This cannot be. You call over to the girl at the watch counter, ask her if she has the time. She says it's about five to eleven.

That's it, the universe is turning backwards, it's folding in on itself. Your eyes and teeth are going to leap out to escape the boredom of sitting in your head.

Now and then, Margo, the supervisor, minces over to see how you're doing. Any sales? You might want to stand up rather than lean on the counter, it's more professional. Old Margo's got to know you're a welfare case, the way she treats you, all phony smiles and impatient sighs. Yesterday you asked her where the keys to the next counter over were, the watch counter; someone wanted help and the salesgirl was gone. Margo flipped her hand over her shoulder. They're in the drawer. And you looked to a wall of thirty little drawers-started to ask her which one and then she exhaled, Who is it that needs the help, Eilleen? as if she'd better just do it herself. The one with wrists, you wanted to spit.

Ah screw the old b.i.t.c.h, don't think about it. Maybe they'll really like you by the end of this and you'll get put on full-time and you can move to another department. Not that working in a department store is your ultimate goal, but you'll start teaching again when you're strong enough. This is an interim. Gives you time to catch your breath, meet people. And gets you an extra hundred bucks to do with what you'd like. You'd like to have a nice Christmas. Maybe you'll buy a little two-person-size turkey. Or maybe a chicken and you could stuff it and make wild rice and baked potatoes and carrots or whatever Grace feels like.

She's really been pretty good about the whole thing this last couple months, all the new stuff, leaving the old stuff: she left: her father, her friend Pearl. Had to leave her cat with Clive's youngest son. That last bit took the most convincing, she was determined, said something about taking a cat cage on the plane-Pearl told her she could-then started on a rant about how Shadow was like her child. She snapped at you, Why don't you just go ahead without me. Your mouth opened and she said, There-see! How do you feel! She was all mouth the days before you left, but you let it go, explained sweetly that the two of you would have to live in an apartment, at least for a while, and here was Clive's son in Toronto with a house and a big backyard. It would be cruel to put that poor cat through a plane trip. Her eyes were bugging. But I'll be with her, she won't be nervous if I'm there. That clinched the deal; you explained that the animals had to stay in the belly of the plane with the luggage and dogs and idiot baggage handlers tossing them around. She narrowed her eyes as if wondering what the h.e.l.l you were trying to pull.

The morning of your flight, she and Pearl just stared at one another. Grace gave Pearl all those crazy little plastic sheep and pigs you'd bought her. The two of them used to sit on the floor hours on end playing with them. You were amazed Grace gave anything. Usually she's so territorial. Then they sat on the front step and exchanged addresses. Then they stared some more, didn't touch one another, just stared like two old men.

It's not that you disliked Pearl, but she was an incessant gossip. Had to keep her at arm's length. Although, as long as you weren't starring in her stories, her big mouth could be the best thing about her. The kid had the goods on everybody-wasn't two weeks before Grace got a carefully printed juicy letter telling all about Mrs. Barrington, the social worker, showing up. Apparently, the morning after you left Toronto, she banged on the front door long and hard, screaming Mrs. Hoffman! Mrs. Hoffman! Open the door. Mrs. Hoffman I know you're in there so you open this door right now. She even ran around peeking through windows on her way to the back door. Pearl said that Mrs. Barrington was so crazy mad, Pearl thought she was going to hurt herself. That letter kept you entertained for weeks. Grace would come up to the bathroom door nattering in whispered shrieks, Mrs. Hoffman, I know you're in there. I mean it! This instant! And you'd laugh yourselves dizzy.

And then Grace's father. She didn't have all that much to say about leaving him really. Danny came and took her for a drive before taking the two of you to the airport. Wonder if it was hard, that last hour or so alone with him. It gave you a little twinge, wondering if he would ever try anything; turn into a born-again father and not bring her back. But Gloria told you he never even bothered to visit when she had Grace with her. Gloria told you that put the kibosh on Danny as a human being as far as she was concerned. So you let him take Grace for a last drive. May as well leave your kid with a half-decent impression of him.

Tried to pump her for information afterward but she didn't say much, just that he took her for Kentucky Fried Chicken and a car wash. She said they didn't talk a lot but that he'd asked her if she was going to write to him. She said she would and asked him if he'd send her the money from the bank account he'd started for her. G.o.d almighty, two peas in a pod. Didn't think a cash obsession could be pa.s.sed down the genes.

The thing is, it's not as if you didn't try and discuss it with Danny before you made the decision to leave. You phoned. I think I'm going to go to Vancouver before things get any worse here, you said. And it was silent at the end of the line, until he finally came out with a Yeah. You tried to give him a chance to not let go. So, well, what do you think, I mean if you want me to stay, I'll stay. Just, what do you think?

Deadpan voice, dull, nothing, he said, It don't matter. You're just gonna do what you wanna do anaways.

And so you told Clive. He didn't try to talk you out of it either. He said he knew it was something you had to do right now, that he hoped it wouldn't be the last he saw of you. Guess he knew the two of you didn't have much chance as lovers. Christ, he was nearly seventy-older than your father. It wasn't really s.e.x that you had anyway, more like holding on to each other for dear life. Clive took you seriously though, seemed like he was falling in love a little. If it weren't for him, you might not of made it here, he gave you the other fifty you needed for plane fare and a hundred to take with you. Even bought you a suit for the teaching job you were going to apply for.

Margo taps you on the shoulder and tells you it's time for your break, you have twenty minutes, don't be long now. Straighten up (you've been leaning again) and brush off your skirt; it's the skirt to the suit Clive got you. Feels like you're casting his pearls before swine.

When you get home, Grace is already parked in front of the TV. Hard to peel her off the thing sometimes. Sometimes her concentration is so concentrated, it's cement; nothing gets through when she's got her eyes on a Get Smart rerun or s...o...b..-Doo on Sat.u.r.day mornings. She hears you tonight though. You tell her hi before you go and hide the record you got her for her birthday. She's eight next month and has developed a mad crush on Donny Osmond. Her last allowance went on Tiger Beat magazine.

Alb.u.m in closet, you join her on the couch in the living room. She's watching a Brady Bunch rerun. The one where the family goes to Hawaii.

Hey, I was thinking today, what would you think of having a birthday party next month?

She unsticks her gaze from Greg Brady and looks at you, with concern or nerves or something. So you say, What's the matter? It'd be fun. We could make a list and you could invite a bunch of kids from your cla.s.s and we could have a cake and play games.

I don't really have much friends at school.

Why does she always think that? She never brings anyone home. Oh you do so. You always say that. Even in Toronto, and your teacher there said you had lots of friends.

Yeah, then how come they called me names and stuff.

Because kids are monsters, but deep down they're OK. So come on, let's do it, it'll be fun. We have to throw a party here so till feel more like our place. And we'll play corny games like Pin the Tail on the Donkey and I Spy. OK, pruneface?

She shoves your shoulder with the side of her head. And smiles. OK. When the phone rings, you kiss her temple, tell her in the voice of one of her cartoon chickens, It's going to be so much fun. She jumps up and runs to get the phone in the kitchen, yells back that it's for you.

It's Stewart. You wait until Grace resumes watching television.

Stewart's craggy voice catches you at the other end of the line, asks you what you're doing, if you're free tonight. You say sure, for a little while, after dinner, you want to have dinner with Grace tonight. And you want to see if you can find a babysitter. How's eight o'clock, he says. Eight's fine, I think, but just lemme call this girl to see if she can come sit with Grace a couple hours. He says, Right-eeo, dear, call him back and hangs up. You sit for a moment thinking.

Sweety? ... Sweety pie?

What?

I think I'm going to go out with Stewart for coffee tonight. So I'll phone Darlene-you like her, don't you? How's that?

She doesn't look up. I thought you had AA tonight.

s.h.i.+t, she's right. You tisk. Yeah. Well. Well, I went night before last. I'll go to an afternoon one tomorrow. She says, Yeah, and keeps watching the tarantula on screen, so you flip your phone book to D for Darlene, the sitter you found through the office at Grace's school.

Stewart's the only one you're still-well, with whom you have this sort of relations.h.i.+p. Met him in Vancouver years ago, back when Danny was in jail and you were short on cash. Called him from Toronto when you were trying to figure out a plan, asked him if he'd be able to front you money for rent. He said he would but he never came through and you called Ray and Alice instead. The only time he was reliable, as you recall, was when you were there in front of him with your palm open. But he's not a-sometimes you just have lunch: he's more like a sugar daddy really. And you wouldn't, but if you're going to buy all these vitamins and meat and fresh fruit and vegetables and whole milk and keep the two of you clothed, well, welfare plus a hundred ain't gonna cut it.

It's no big deal. Stewart's OK, he's bald and divorced and a little sad. Easy enough. And it's whatever you feel like at the time: fast or more social. He gives you whatever he's got on him, sometimes extra because he knows you've got Grace, sometimes fifty, sometimes more. And Grace thinks he's just a family friend. She never asks-sometimes you mention how much money he gives you and she believes he does it as a humanitarian gesture or something.

Hi may I speak with Darlene please-oh hi Darlene, I didn't recognize your voice, it's Eilleen Hoffman.

You wonder sometimes if Grace knows on some level. If she just doesn't say anything. She's met Stewart once, he was dropping you off just as she got home from school. She seemed indifferent to him for the most part. She thought he was a little on the dopey side, truth be told. She does dopey cartoon imitations of him after he calls. She kind of likes his big yellow car, she calls it the Yellow Submarine, and she likes it when he gives you an extra couple bucks for the kid. Anyway, a lot of women have boyfriends who take care of the bills; at least this one isn't getting in your hair twenty-four hours a day.

Just that sometimes you half expect someone to come tiptoeing up to your baby and whisper in her ear, tell her her mother is the unspeakable. Tell her something to make her never want to look at you again. You even told her a story once about being mistaken for a hooker, and you laughed uproariously, just in case. Just in case; you've laid the groundwork to roll your eyes with believable head-shaking frivolity.

Had a dream last week. Grace was tiny again, two or three. One of those slow thick dreams where your legs and arms are leaded and your voice is mola.s.ses congealed behind your tongue.

Holding her propped on one hip as you answered the door, you could feel her soft damp arms against your neck, fingers and wrists entwined at your nape. The strangers at the door were in dark suits, arms extended mechanically. The man on the left wore a charcoal fedora like your father used to. He reached out and pulled Grace from your hip. You could feel her fingers losing their grip but your mind was a tar baby and every thought you punched or yanked lay stuck in its viscous belly. Couldn't think or move, but you could hear the bawl of mummy and the man holding her turned and walked away, hysterical sobs erupting over his shoulder. The one still at your door jotted words in a pad with a china blue cover. He seemed to be writing notes on the condition of your home, your housekeeping skills. Your hand moved to your hair, which only called attention to your personal appearance. The fastest movement was his scribbling pencil. As he turned to leave, you made out Stewart's name and old Clive's, highlighted in yellow ink in his blue notebook.

You shake off the dream, pull yourself back in your living room in time to hear the Bradys' closing music, say, Lamby? Why don't you come sit with me in the kitchen and make a guest list for your birthday party while I start dinner. Oh s.h.i.+t, just let me call Stewart back quick.

Grace Four.

FEBRUARY/MARCH 1974.

IT WAS SAt.u.r.dAY and I was up in Sadie's room with her, playing Donny Osmond records while Mum was downstairs in the kitchen with Sadie's parents, Alice and Ray, and I was wondering how come we had nothing better to do. We'd been in Vancouver around five months and Mum was never sick any more-it seemed like we should've spent the day at Stanley Park or something. Instead I could hear Sadie's dad, Ray, laughing at my mum, making fun of her all afternoon-"Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph, Eilleen! You're a wingnut, you'd get lost in a phone booth"-while Sadie told me Donny Osmond would never even kiss me never mind marry me because I was skinny and bucktoothed and way too young. Sadie was nine. Nine and three quarters.

Then she sat down at her electric keyboard, in the spare room, and plunked out "Heart and Soul," the only one she knew off by heart. And right in the middle of it, she said how she was going to take ballet lessons at the community centre. I sat beside her and felt the music vibrate in my ears, expecting her dad to tear up the stairs any second just to plink out the sidekick part at the other end of the keyboard. Sadie's fingers plopping their way through "Heart and Soul" was practically a surefire way to get Ray to come play with her no matter what he was doing. He thought his kids were musical geniuses and loved to get both of them to sit and sing "Night and Day" into the microphone of this huge reel-to-reel tape recorder he had. But especially Sadie; he said lots of times how he was going to get her a voice coach-that voice of hers could take her places. I thought it might too, the way it cracked and snagged the music. In fact, I wished on the sore throats I'd been getting since the winter, that they'd give me the kind of Sadie-voice I was going to need if I wanted go places.

I sat beside her on the piano bench and watched her play, wanting like crazy to get my own lessons. Then I said how maybe I should take ballet too. Sadie laughed and brought one hand to the other side of the keys to play her own sidekick part. I followed her fingers and knew I was a feeb compared to her; Sadie was taller than I was with long thick almost-black hair and big black eyes, deep in her always-tan face. She wasn't clumsy like me; she didn't trip on rugs or knock stuff down. She was dead sure about everything and it made her seem tough and right all the time. Hardly anyone ever looked at Sadie and didn't say how beautiful she was.

She kept her eyes on her fingers and laughed. "But you're accident p.r.o.ne, even my mum says-yesterday she goes, 'Gees, Eilleen picked a dandy of a name for that kid. Shoulda called her Thumper.' And it's true, man, you always got scabs on your knees from where you fell and you got no coordination and plus you're too skinny; my dad says you ain't got enough on your bones to even hold you up half the time."

It was hearing it from Sadie that got me saying "ain't" for a while. Until my mum made me stop by telling me that it was the ugliest thing about her: Sadie couldn't speak proper English-that and the fact that she was going to have a hawk-nose just like her dad. It kind of bugged me when my mum said that, because anyone would want to be like Sadie and that's why you'd do stuff to be like her so that everyone would want to be like you too-tough and pretty and getting away with stuff other kids would be in trouble for. On the other hand, though, it sounded like I could be smarter and prettier and sort of Sadie-Plus if I added Mum's big words and took out the ain'ts. But in the meantime, while I waited for her to be nothing but a pile of nose and bad English, I wanted to catch up. In a few cla.s.ses I'd be leaping through the air in a crispy pink skirt; ballet was going to make me into a pretty, dainty girl-girl. It would make my teeth straight and flatten my cowlick and give me leopard eyes like Sadie's. She kept going with her sandpapery laugh, though, telling me more and more reasons why I couldn't take ballet. I missed Pearl all the sudden. Pearl would've wanted to do ballet to the song "Country roads, take me home" and she would've thought I'd be good at it.

But Sadie and me were still best friends and the fact was, she rather'd have me there than not. It was better to get up Sunday morning and trudge through the snow with me than to have to go alone.

The first morning of cla.s.s, I waited at Sadie's back door with my boots leaking, trying not to melt on Alice's warm kitchen floor. Sadie was upstairs screaming, "Give it! Give it back now or you're dead! Eddayyyyy!" It was quarter to ten; cla.s.s was starting in fifteen minutes. The house shook a little and Eddy thumped down the stairs with Sadie running behind, yelling, "Give it back, you friggin' nature! I'm tellin'-give it!" When he got to the bottom, he went sliding across the kitchen floor in his socks, jumping and swan-leaping and yodelling this noise, like Ethel Merman if she was falling off a roof, while he waved Sadie's new leotard over his head.

Alice, their mum, yelled, "What the h.e.l.l is going on in there!" right when Sadie got hold of her leotard and yanked. Eddy's socks slipped out from under him and he cracked his back down on the floor. So Sadie stood over him with her leotard and yelled, "Serves you right, y'lez!" in his face and stomped back up to her room. Eddy crunched shut his eyes and moaned his guts out.

Alice ran in the kitchen and went down on her knees so she could rock Eddy in her arms and holler, "Sadie! Get your smarta.s.s back down these stairs right now and apologize to him or you're not goin' anywhere, young lady," over his head. The clock said almost five to ten.

I got rocks in my stomach. There was no way I was going to walk in that cla.s.sroom alone.

A few seconds later Sadie skipped down the steps, all bundled up and ready to go. Ray, her dad, came in the kitchen and looked bored at Eddy. "What's wrong with him?"

"You know d.a.m.n well who's always the instigator in these things!" Alice was looking at Sadie and still holding Eddy.

Ray grinned at Sadie, like he knew for sure that she was going to be a star if people would just get the h.e.l.l out of her way. Then Ray noticed me. "Hiya Grace, here's a nice good morning for you, huh? Geez, the two of you better get your rears in gear if you're going to make it to this ballet cla.s.s." Sadie whipped past her mum and Eddy and pulled me with her.

We scuffed along the sidewalk, some of it shovelled, some with thick snow that got walked into being ice. We chewed gum in time to our steps and Sadie talked between chomps. "You know if you swallow your gum, it stays in your stomach for seven years." I didn't answer. She was probably right. She blew a bubble and said, "Is your mum still working at Eaton's?"

"Nope. It was just till January, till after Christmas." I looked sideways at Sadie's coat: fake fur with ear-sized black spots on top of silver-grey. Mine looked dull next to it now. Sadie's coat. It just bugged me-I couldn't believe she'd picked it when we were shopping in the Girls' Department at Eaton's with our mums. I tried on something black and belted; I thought it looked fancy and ladyish with the skinny waist. Then Sadie threw on this fat mountain of fur and spots. She looked like a dalmatian blob; it was the dumbest-looking thing I ever saw and there she'd gone and picked it on her own free will. I was so glad.

But then something happened between the department store and the first day back at school, after Christmas vacation. Something changed that clown-thing into a movie star coat. The other kids stared at Sadie, all jealous, and touched her sleeves. Grownup ladies ran their fingers over her collar and wondered if they could find one in their own size. Sadie must've been praying for snow till summer.

I peeled my eyes off her coat and looked back at my feet going along the sidewalk, then asked her, even though my mum'd told me not to, "What'd you get for Christmas again, you never said."

"Umm, I'm not supposed to tell you-my mum said not to talk about what we got for Christmas because you guys are on welfare and you don't have a dad and your mum couldn't afford to get you as much as us."

My mum had told me the same thing, only she said that being an only child I was bound to get more stuff than Sadie and Eddy, and that Alice wouldn't be able to afford as much for both her kids. So I said, "Oh. Well, I got a brooch shaped like a dog with little green gla.s.s eyes. And I got a ring. Too." I pulled my mitten off to show her the blue stone. "It's sapphire," I told her, and drooped my hand to look glamorous.

Sadie glanced. "I got Spirograph."

I pulled my mitt back on. "And I got a black Barbie with an evening gown and high heels. And Monopoly-"

"Holy crow, you just got Monopoly now? We've had it since we were little!"

I was trying to think of another Christmas present worth bragging about when we got to the edge of Riley Park. There was snow and sticks on the bottom of the kiddy pool and three teenagers in red lumberman jackets on the other side of it. They had their backs turned and their shoulders scrunched into each other. "Glue Sniffers," we said together. It seemed like we had to say what they were when we saw them, to keep them away. Riley Park was full of Glue Sniffers: big kids from school and The Projects. Guys as old as my sister filled up baggies with glue, shoved in their noses and breathed until they got dizzy. Glue Sniffers were like boogeymen almost. We kept going toward the community centre.

When we got to the cla.s.sroom, the clock on the wall was just hitting ten past ten. The rest of the girls sat cross-legged on the floor, all in leotards with white or pink tights. They sat super straight with their hands folded, listening to this skinny lady with a long neck that looked like a foot cuz of being all chicken-bone-stringy right down to her b.o.o.bs practically. She had on a bodysuit and baggy drawstring pants. And ballet shoes. She looked up then at her watch. "Sorry we're late," we told her, talking all over each other.

"That's good, I hope you're sorry enough not to let it happen again. I'm Miss Stickney. Have you got your leotards on underneath?" We did. We yanked off our slacks and sweaters and sat down to change into our slippers. Meanwhile Miss Stickney got the other girls up and made them do stretches. Sadie watched out of the corner of her eye and got the giggles. My other slipper wouldn't go on and I got them too. I tried not to hear the squeaks in Sadie's throat, but then she started a mouse-voice of Eddy's Ethel Merman opera and we both shook from holding the laughs in. Sadie coughed to cover hers up and I bit my tongue to get the most pain without blood.

Our teacher looked at us, breathing, slow in/slow out, with her arms bent all funny like my black Barbie. "Come along, ladies, giggling on the floor is not going to get you warm enough to keep you from pulling a hamstring." We stood up, embarra.s.sed, but then I got a picture of Sadie dragging a ham on a string and it was killing me. Sadie started stretching.

"What's your name, Miss?" Sadie told her. "And yours?" I looked to the other girls and copied their stretches so that my name would come out of someone who was trying her best and told her. "Well," she said, and dropped forward so her palms were down flat against the floor, "the sooner you two find out this cla.s.s won't tolerate silliness, the better off you'll be." Miss Stickney told us we would be more flexible than she was in no time at all, that we were young and like rubber next to her. I thought she should know that I wasn't anything like rubber. The back of my legs were burning like crazy and my fingers didn't even dangle to my ankles and she yelled, "Knees straight!"

Then she arranged us in a circle, put music on, and we hop-kicked our way around and round the circle in time to violins. It seemed like we were doing some kind of furry-hat Russian dance thing, not ballet. We weren't doing anything that was going to make me more graceful, we weren't leaping through the air, and we didn't get tutus. We just kept kicking around the circle over and over until she clapped at us to stop and everybody fell back on their b.u.ms, panting. The cla.s.s finished with more stretching.

I pulled on my clothes afterward, tired and crabby. My throat hurt and I didn't want to go back in the cold. The bones on the bottom of my feet hurt and I was mad at myself for getting a stupid short-sleeved leotard that made me look like a baby instead of the long-sleeved kind that made Sadie all long and tall and practically grown-up.

The next two Sundays were pretty much the same: squat kicks around the room and long breathy stretches. Except after the second cla.s.s, Sadie brought along this other girl on our walk home. Then the third next cla.s.s, she went over to the girl's house afterwards and I didn't get invited. I was kind of upset, like I was going to cry on the way home. Sometimes it seemed dumb even being friends with people. They'd just go off and be friends with someone else. Even if you tried to be like them. Or else they'd move. Or else you'd move. Or else they had a whole family who did stuff together, like, had dinner at a certain time or did church stuff and you could never be in the family, even though sometimes you could be one of the place settings at dinner.

When I got home, Mum was on a cleaning binge. I hardly ever saw her like that, moving so fast, so I stood outside the kitchen in my boots and coat and watched. Country music was blaring out of the radio on the counter and Mum rubbed a J Cloth on the floor on her hands and knees. She looked up. "Hey there, ballerina. How was it today?"

"Mmm. Same."

"No good? Hey! Goofball, you wanna take your feet off, you're slus.h.i.+ng up my floor. I ain't just a-killin' time down here, ol' thang."

"Sorry." I backed up and took off my boots. "I hate these lessons. It's not even ballet. Just this kicking stuff like-" and I squatted and tried to show her.

She looked up, still wiping around herself. "Huh. Maybe she's trying to strengthen your legs."

"No. She's stupid."

"Well, you don't have to keep going, just do whatcha feel, shlemiel."

"Yeah, I know."

She kept wiping and said, "Your dad called today."

"He did? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm telling you now."

"Well, what'd he say? Did he say anything about me? Did you tell him about me doing ballet?"

"Yes, of course he asked about you and how you were doing and I told him you were at ballet-he seemed to get a chuckle out of that."

"What do you mean, a chuckle?"

"Well, I mean a kick, you know, he said, 'Yeah? boy that's real good, that's real good for her,' and I told him what they were going to cost and he didn't offer to pay for them. You know. The usual."

"Oh. Is he coming here?"

"Well, he said he might come in the spring. And pigs might fly, but they're very unlikely birds. He said Charlie's out there again. She's there with a guy, staying at some joint your father's got on Bloor Street. Apparently he's a pretty tough customer, the guy -his name's Ian."

"Ian?"

"Yeah. He's an albino."

"Like a rat?"

"Apparently."

Mum was right about Vancouver. By the end of March it was T-s.h.i.+rt time; kids were already getting tans on their faces. And I had a friend called Gabrielle. My sore throats ended up being the flu and I had to stay home from school for a whole week-it was Gabrielle who showed up at our door with a big envelope of get-well cards that the grade 3 cla.s.s made. I knew our teacher made them do it and Gabrielle was just delivering them, but still, it was practically like she made them herself. Plus, it turned out to be that Darlene, my babysitter, was Gabrielle's big sister.

Gabrielle was like Pearl, kind of, but prettier. She lived a block and a half away, in The Projects, and she was one of hardly any kids from around there that my mum didn't say was riff-raff. Sadie and Eddy were riff-raff.

The first couple times I brought Gabrielle home after school, we had the place to ourself. We drank milk with Strawberry Quik and played cards at the kitchen table until she had to go home for dinner. The third time she came over, Gabrielle taught me snap. Gabrielle won every practice round and I made sure she knew they didn't count. I cracked my knuckles while she dealt our first real game. I planned on being one of those pool shark guys who stomped everybody when they played for real. I slowly turned cards off my hand until she waggled her finger at me, like Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched, cuz she said I was holding back, trying to see her card before she saw mine. Then she yelled, "Snap!" and grabbed both our twos and the piles underneath them. And "Snap!" again and the next time and the next. I was down to around eight cards and the sound of her voice was starting to bug me, that word-if she said it one more time. "Snap!" I snapped, but it was a four and an ace. Gabrielle giggled and snapped at the next pair. I was getting bored when my mother came home.

Mum was in a good mood; she was coming home from General Brock, our school, where she got a job doing volunteer work with the first- and second-graders. She tried to do teaching in Vancouver when we first moved here and found out she wasn't allowed to in B.C. unless she went back to school and did more cla.s.ses. She said forget-it to that and then got this idea to do volunteer work, cuz maybe it'd be an in.

Gabrielle gave my mother one of her s.h.i.+ny blonde smiles, said h.e.l.lo and held out her hand. I never saw a kid shake hands with a grown-up before that. My mother looked all impressed and said, "Gabrielle," and rolled her r like she was French or something, "tu parles francais?"

"No. Not really. My dad does. My sister and I were born in Montreal, but we've been here since I was really little."